


only a whisper

by stonestars



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: F/M, an expansion on Magnus in eden's au, eldritch but barely, go read that first it's better, light? angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-04
Updated: 2018-04-04
Packaged: 2019-04-18 08:40:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14209368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stonestars/pseuds/stonestars
Summary: From a young age her father told her never to follow him to the cabin at the edge of the oasis.Time wasn't right, in their town.





	1. I. only a whisper

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ToTillAGarden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToTillAGarden/gifts).
  * Inspired by [A Story, But With No Song](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13903854) by [ToTillAGarden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToTillAGarden/pseuds/ToTillAGarden). 



> This fic was 100% entirely inspired by Eden's (totillagarden) wonderful wonderful fic "A Story, But With No Song." Eden is, along with being such a wonderful person, is a wonderful writer and I love that fic so much.  
> And I had an excuse to write this because it's Eden's birthday so; happy birthday Eden!! Thanks for inspiring me to write-- both this fic and other things. You really do have a way with words. (go read her fic first, this won't make as much sense without it! plus; it's just a really really good fic)
> 
> There are four chapters here-- the first an introduction, middle two being two different possible endings, and the final a short afterward.  
> I'm leaving it up to you guys (and Eden) to decide which you think is how it happened. I have one in mind as the "true" ending but, like Griffin with the secret of why Garfield grew Magnus's body, I will take it to my grave. (Also; there's a reason I left it open to interpretation!)

From a young age her father told her never to follow him to the cabin at the edge of the oasis.

Some days, she would wake up and time wouldn’t be _right_ ; the plants would be forever stuck swaying in a non-existent breeze and the sand from desert storms would be hanging in midair and the clouds in the sky would not move. Or she’d wake up and it would be night still, and night would stretch on until she had forgotten what it felt like to feel the sun on her skin and the warmth of the desert sand beneath her bare feet, but the plants wouldn’t wither and die like she expected, instead seemingly kept alive by some force beyond anyone’s comprehension.

On those days, her father would try to smile at her as he got ready to leave, sometimes having to take a lantern, other times bringing water with him because it was too hot to walk even just to the cabin without it, and he’d remind her that she could walk with him to the edge of town, but no further.

She would always listen, of course, because she knew that he told her to stay to keep her safe, but she was always so _curious_ about the cabin that sat at the very edge of the oasis.

She’d be lying if she said she didn’t feel _drawn_ to it, didn’t hear it calling her name sometimes, just a whisper on the wind. She wasn’t always sure if she heard it, because it would be there and then it wouldn’t, so faint that she could barely remember it calling to her in the first place.

But sometimes, when she was playing alone in their backyard, or doing her chores, or walking by herself through town, or sitting under a tree and reading a book, she would close her eyes, feel a breeze on her face, and hear her name, carried from the cabin that she was not to visit.

Whenever she heard it, she’d stand up, walking until she stood at the edge of the last building in town and she’d stare at the cabin, at the logs that no one was quite sure the origin of, and she’d wait, and listen, hoping she might hear her name again.

She never did.

-

On her eighteenth birthday, she visited the cabin for the first time.

Time wasn’t right, in their town, and she wouldn’t have even _known_ that it was her eighteenth birthday had her father not kept careful track of the days that passed even when the sun hung in the sky for weeks or didn’t rise again for a month. He marked each day on a big calendar, always looking at his watch again and again to make sure he was on top of the time.

When she was little, she would take one of his pocket watches and watch the seconds go by; the ticking of the clock always mesmerized her, constant even when the world was not.

-

She woke up that morning and found that the sun had not risen, yet, and her father was waiting in the kitchen with a scowl on his face.

He told her that he was going to the cabin, because he wouldn’t let her have a birthday without the sun shining overhead.

She shouldn’t have been as excited as she was when she asked him if she could tag along, promised she would just stand outside and not follow him in, that she would listen to his every instruction, that he wouldn’t have to worry--

She also shouldn’t have been as excited as she was when he interrupted her with a tired sigh and told her to grab her shoes, that she could tag along if she really wanted to.

She smiled, and thanked him, and thanked him again.

As she threw her arms around her father, in the cabin a man stood up and started carving something.

-

Her father knew about the pull the cabin had on her, though he would never tell her that he did.

He’d seen her, of course, stop what she was doing, seemingly called by the passing breeze, and hurry to the edge of town to look across the oasis towards the cabin. He’d seen her follow him until they reached the last of the buildings, seen the way she watched him all the way out to the cabin and all the way back.

He was no stranger to the pull the cabin had on his daughter, but that didn’t mean he had to like the fact that it called to her.

Some part of him still remembered when it called to him, too.

It had been a long time since then, of course, but he had felt it once. Before him, no one dared venture to the cabin. They all knew, even then, that the cabin was the reason that time was wrong in their towns, but they didn’t know what was inside of the cabin, didn’t know the clouded white eyes of the man who murmured to himself day and night and day again, pulling at his hair as he was faced with all of possibility.

The wind used to call his name too, a whisper on a dying breeze that would make him perk up, and he always instinctively knew that it was coming from the cabin. He didn’t know that it was actually the voice of the man inside, not until he got up the courage to make his way across the oasis on his own to knock on the door of the cabin.

The call and the pull stopped after that.

He never stopped going back.

-

As they crossed the oasis, her father carrying a lantern to light the way through the night, he told her that she was to wait outside the cabin.

She knew this was part of the deal, and nodded enthusiastically as a breeze swirled around her and whispered her name, louder than it ever had. She paused, for just a moment, and if her father noticed he did not say a word, simply turned to the cabin and handed her the lantern.

He raised his hand, and knocked.

-

She did not see the man that day, but when her father came out of the cabin his mouth was set in a straight line as he handed her an expertly carved wooden duck.

He told her it was from the man inside, and that she should thank him for the gift from out here. She stood as tall as she could and called in through the window, though she heard no reply and saw no movement.

When she got home she put the wooden duck on a shelf in her room, where she could see it every day.

-

Years passed without her returning to the cabin, her father still forbidding it. Time never went wrong on her birthday again, and though she would ask him whenever he went, he told her that he wouldn’t take her that day.

She didn’t want to ignore his request not to go, so she stayed, but she still heard her name on the breeze sometimes, and she still watched the cabin from the edge of town.

And then, one morning, she woke up, and everything was stopped.

She had lived in the same house in the same village her entire life and had grown used to the ways in which time flowed wrong. She knew that it would affect the water, the winds, the sun and the moon, and so many things, sometimes even plants or small animals.

But she had never, in her life, seen it affect _people._

Until she woke up and everything was frozen. It wasn’t just the clouds in the sky or the stream in her backyard or the sand that the wind was carrying with it, it was the neighbor and his dog and the quiet old woman who always knit on the porch across the street and the baker down the way and it was her _father._

He was standing in the kitchen, frozen in the middle of making breakfast, and when she came downstairs he did not move at all.

It was like the world had stopped, the egg in his hand still half-cracked against the bowl and the water from the faucet a column of unmoving liquid.

The world _had_ stopped.

And then a breeze blew by, and whispered her name.

And she knew where she had to go.

-

The breezes weren’t the source of the whisper.

They were simply carrying his voice to her.

In his cabin, across the oasis, as he whispered every possible future to himself, every possible turn the world could take, he would sometimes pause to think about the world in which he could have had _her,_ could have had her father, as well, could have had a shop and a home and a life worth living. And when he did, he would whisper her name.

He didn’t mean for it to reach her.

He didn’t even _know_ that it did.

He knew everything, but not this.

-

She got ready just as she did every other day.

She tied a red bandana in her hair, carefully knotting it at the top of her head, and watched herself in the mirror, her face set in a determined frown. She took her father’s pocket watch and put it in the pocket of her dress, and just as she was about to leave she turned and ran back to her room to get the wooden duck that the man inside the cabin had given her years and years ago.

When she reached the edge of the town she found that a sandstorm was raging so hard when time had stopped that the air was thick with sand, simply suspended where it had been swirling on the winds.

She almost turned back, but the thought of her father, frozen in the kitchen, and the rest of the town made her grit her teeth and step into the storm.

It was surprisingly peaceful inside the sand, and it was as if her feet knew the way there, from years and years of watching the cabin across the oasis. She walked for a while, knowing this was the right way and not knowing how she knew, until eventually she just stopped.

She reached out and knocked on the solid wood of the cabin’s door.

It swung open.

* * *

 

She steps inside the cabin to see the man inside stand up as carpenter’s tools fall to the ground and he turns to her, sees her, and smiles.

The cloudiness in his eyes makes her throat feel tight.

He does not look anything like she had expected, yet somehow he is exactly what she expected. His skin is covered in etchings that seem to be almost alive, yet he looks like he’s around her age. There’s a scar on one of his eyes and he has sideburns bigger than the rest of his hair that, for some reason, make her smile.

It feels like she has known him all her life, like he is someone she _should_ have known her whole life but hasn’t, and something about the smile still sitting on his face makes her take a step forward and speak.

“I--I’m Julia,” she says, and he tips his head ever so slightly to the side and his smile deepens. When he doesn’t respond, she takes another step and awkwardly starts again. “Y-You probably know my father, Steven, he comes here a lot, um…” She takes another step towards him, she’s within reach, now, and can see the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and the calluses on his hands from work. “Everything is frozen, did--did you do that?”

She reaches out to touch his arm and he flinches away, shaking his head. Opens his mouth to say something, but catches himself as he does.

Instead of responding to her, he walks into his kitchen and begins making a cup of tea.

Outside the window, a sandstorm begins to rage again.

-

He doesn’t say a word to her that day, though she speaks to him quite a bit. Telling him that she’s always been curious about this cabin, that she kept the wooden duck he made for her all those years ago--did he remember?--and that she had brought it.

She asks his name, a few times, and he simply smiles at her sadly and shakes his head, still afraid to say even a word to her for fear of ruining this moment. He’s careful not to let her skin touch his when he takes the wooden duck from her to look at it again, the thought of exposing her to her own death terrifying to him.

Still, there’s something in the way the corners of her lips turn up when he nods slowly to let her know that he remembers this duck. It’s the same thing that he sees in the dimple that appears on her cheek when she laughs to herself and in the red bandana in her hair that makes it fall just right against her shoulders.

She quiets his mind for the first time in eternity.

He is not everywhere, not all at once; he is not seeing every tragedy, every burning building, every husband losing his wife or child losing their father or mother losing her child.

Instead, all he sees is her.

-

When she leaves that day, he hands her back the wooden duck from so many years ago and a new duck that he carved while she told him stories about her father, her town, and her life. She takes them with a smile, tucking them safely into her pockets, and then frowns.

“I don’t have anything to give you,” she says, and for some reason his eyes flick up to the bandana around her head involuntarily.

She sees the motion and smiles, untying it and holding it out to him. “It’s not much,” she says, “but if you want it…”

He takes it, slowly, and watches the smile that breaks out across her face. “I’ll come back,” she says, waving to him as she steps into the sandstorm still raging outside and disappears into the distance.

He ties the bandana around his neck and, somehow, it feels like it belongs there.

The moment she disappears from view, he sees her burning behind his eyelids in the wreckage of a town so different from the one she lives in, and he has to brace himself against the doorway.

-

It takes two years for her to visit again.

She does not smile when she knocks on the door, does not even say a word as he turns to the kitchen and begins to make her a cup of tea, just as he did years ago. The bandana in her hair is black.

She says; “My father didn’t want me to come back,” and the corners of her mouth don’t turn up.

He knows, of course, what happened, but he still wants her to tell him. He might know all of existence, everything that could happen, would happen, did happen, but he also knows that he needs to hear this from her.

She says; “I guess you’ll be seeing a lot of me, now.”

He reaches out to comfort her but hesitates, knowing what his touch can do to a person.

She says; “I knew he was getting old, but…” and then her voice dies in her throat and he can’t help himself, he puts his hand gently on her back against the fabric of her shirt.


	2. II. she doesn’t see anything

When he touches her, she doesn’t see anything, just leans back into his touch and sobs harder. He doesn’t move for what must be hours, letting her cry for the father she has lost.

Of course, he doesn’t tell her about the world in which they both died, the world in which they had each other and then they did not.

-

He tries to keep control of time while she is mourning, but it’s hard. 

It’s hard because sometimes his mind gets ahead of itself, thinking through every possibility like it’s what really is happening, and it’s hard because his mind tells him that she is not smiling because of him, because when he touched her she  _ saw _ it, saw the moment of her death like it was happening, and she doesn’t want to see him, doesn’t want anything to do with him.

The first time she sees him cry is because he doesn’t hear or see her coming across the desert. 

She doesn’t even knock, simply opens his door and sits down on the bed next to him and puts a hand on his back, against the fabric of his shirt, and gently comforts him until the tears don’t flow anymore.  

She says; “You cry for the people you can’t save, don’t you.”

It’s not a question.

He doesn’t answer.

-

It takes a long time for her to smile again. 

One day she just knocks on his door like she always does, and the corners of her lips turn up again when she sees him. She sits down in her chair at the table like she always does and says, “Can you tell me your name, now?”

And he turns and looks at her, his eyebrows drawn together in a frown. He has not spoken to her, yet, still afraid, and he’s not dared to touch her even after the first time he did. 

Whatever they have, this quiet friendship, is not something he wants to risk losing.

She smiles again. “You’re afraid to speak to me, aren’t you? I know you  _ can _ speak, because I hear you, muttering things, and I think…” she hesitates, “it’s  _ your _ voice I hear on the wind, isn’t it?”

He’s not really sure how to respond to this. He takes a deep breath.

It’s been an eternity since he has said a word to anyone other than the six like him, and when he opens his mouth to speak his voice dies in his throat.

“I don’t need much of an answer,” she says, “just your name.”

“Magnus.”

His voice comes out in a whisper, but that does not mean she doesn’t hear it.

She does.

-

Whenever he sees her leave, he sees every way in which she could die.

She smiles at him, now, as he walks her to the door, the corners of her eyes wrinkling as she says “See ya, Magnus,” and waves to him as she sets off back to her home. 

The moment she starts to walk away, he sees it. 

It starts, as one might expect, with Raven’s Roost.

He sees her burning while he is miles and miles away, sees another version of himself digging through the wreckage and finding her body, holding her as he cries.

And then it starts at the beginning. 

As a baby, she caught a sickness that had her running a high fever for almost a week; the same sickness that killed her mother. It could’ve killed her.

When she was two she fell into the watering hole in the oasis and her father saved her; if he had noticed a second later it would’ve been too late.

When she was five she tried to follow her father through a storm and almost got lost. A travelling merchant spotted her and brought her back home. She could’ve wandered in the desert for days until she had succumbed to the heat.

Possibilities fly through his head until he reaches now, and he sees her walking away from him and a sandstorm rushes in, the winds blowing her so far off course that she never finds her town again. Never finds him again.

A monster emerges from the desert sand, catching her unawares, and devours her before anyone can do anything. 

Or; she makes it home but falls ill to something and passes away in the night, and the people of the town remark that she was so young, so strong, and no one ever visits his cabin again.

Or; a building in town collapses and she risks her life to save the people inside but she dies in the process.

Or; she burns with the rest of her village after a drought. Or; she doesn’t eat for weeks because of a food shortage and starves. Or; she refuses to let the victims of a sickness die alone and catches it herself. Or--or---or--------or… 

She disappears into the town, and he is left unable to breathe.

-

She always comes back. 

Knocks on the door out of habit and comes in with a smile, sometimes finding him already in the kitchen. Other times he’s too absorbed in his thoughts and she comes over and quietly sits with him, a comforting hand on his shoulder a gentle smile on her face until he feels ready to stand up.

She learns, quickly, that he is afraid. That he doesn’t speak very much because he is afraid of telling her too much, that he doesn’t let her touch him for too long because even though it doesn’t seem to do anything to her it  _ might. _

She doesn’t fault him for it, just whispers his name and offers him as much comfort as she can.

She is the first person to say his name with such kindness behind it.

She is the first person to say his name.

-


	3. II. she sees herself burning

In an instant, she is no longer in his cabin. 

She’s in a carpenter’s shop and her father is there as the floor falls away beneath them and flames rise up to meet them and she is burning and she is dying. 

She gasps, pulling away, her shoulders no longer shaking, but rather stiff, fearful.

“Wh--What--”

He opens his mouth to speak. Doubts himself.

She inches her chair back.

He closes his eyes. “P-Please,” he says, his voice breaking from not being used for so long. “That’s… not a part of this world.” 

She stares at him.

“In another world, yes,” he says. “There was a town where I lived with you and you burned with it.” He shakes his head. “That’s not here. I am… I am so, so sorry. I didn’t think…” He reaches out to touch her again, and she shrinks away, shaking her head rapidly.

“I’m sorry I… I have to go.”

He watches her run away through the sand, stumbling as she goes.

-

The next time the flow of time is disrupted, she waits until her neighbor says “Julia, dear, isn’t it about time for you to set things right?” And then she slowly puts on her shoes, takes her father’s pocket watch, and lights his lantern despite the fact that she knows the way through the dark. 

She walks slowly to the cabin, and inside it he perks up when he hears a knock, turning around with a cup of tea and a duck in his hands, an apology ready on his lips despite his fear.

There’s nothing in the doorway but her retreating back, headed back to the town she cares so much about.

She wouldn’t have even come if she didn’t care.

-

He mutters her name more than ever.

She ignores every breeze.

It’s not that she hates him, it’s that she’s scared. Scared of the vision he showed her, scared of the fact that he can see her die, scared because the feeling of burning will not leave her dreams. 

And avoiding him, ignoring him, is so much easier than confronting the fact that he sees her die.

-

They fall into a routine, if you could call it that.

When time goes wrong it is because he is sitting on his bed, head in hands, muttering about the reality that he has lost track of. 

All she needs to do is knock on the door to break him out of his head, to make him look up or stand up or move, or anything, and then time will return to normal.

So that’s all she does. 

Knocks.

She knocks and then turns back towards her town and sets off across the sand once more, not bothering to cast a second glance at the door that had swung open or the man inside.

He goes to call out to her, but her name dies on his lips, just as she does in his mind as he watches her disappear into the distance.

-

Eventually, the door stops swinging open for her.

-


	4. III. afterword

There is a man in a cabin on the edge of an oasis who wears a red bandana around his neck and disappears for the same day every year.

The first year he comes with the bandana they tease him. He takes it in stride, because here are the people he loved once--loves still--laughing at the story he tells them while the corner of his lips turn up in a smile. 

He laughs with them.

Two years later he smiles when he says her name, says he told her their stories and that she wanted him to tell them hello, says that he’s not sure if they can love but he’s sure that he loves her nonetheless.

Or; he does not smile but he still thinks of her, still wonders if she would love these people like she loves him, like he loves them-- loves her.

-

There’s a man in a cabin on the edge of an oasis who wears a red bandana and forgot how to love, once, but who is slowly remembering how to again.

Or; he remembered how to love just a moment too late.

-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's that!! I hope you enjoyed this Eden--and everyone else--and I hope you have an absolutely wonderful birthday because you are absolutely wonderful!


End file.
